Netify Agent

Netify DPI - netifyd Agent

If we're doing our jobs right, people won't notice the network: the important Zoom business call will always work, the ping time to the Fortnite server will never hiccup, and the streaming movie won't pixelate or (gasp!) pause. But the expanding role of applications in our daily lives and the pervasiveness of network-ready devices have increased our dependence on the network.

The days of cut-price and unpredictable networks are coming to an end. Today's network has to be smarter.

• Quality of experience (QoE)
• Digital experience monitoring
• Application-based network policies
• Next-generation security and firewall protection

Though the above list includes a few buzzwords, we certainly understand that these types of features make the network experience better. Here are just a few examples:

• Prioritizing network traffic based on application and modern protocols, not IP lists
• Pinpointing bottlenecks by application, e.g. Microsoft Teams response times
• Identifying malicious traffic, even when encrypted
• Creating application-level QoS/latency policies
• Generating latency-friendly routing policies in multiWAN/SD-WAN environments

How It Works

The open source Netify DPI Agent - netifyd - does one thing and one thing very well: network analysis using deep packet inspection (DPI). The DPI Agent passively captures network traffic and then produces network metadata and policies:

• Network Policies
• Data Streams
  - Detection Metadata
  - Stats and Performance Data
  - Status Data

Product Highlights

Netify agent highlights include:

The protocol detection is handled by a modified version of the nDPI library. Netify adds handling for run-time application definitions, network policies, JSON data streams, packet dynamics, packet pipelines, and more. The source code is ready to use on various popular Linux distributions, FreeBSD, OpenWRT, Raspberry Pi and more. If you're a technical guy, you can find all the source code on Netify's GitLab project page.

Further Reading

• Data Streams Overview - network metadata for audit, performance, stats and more.
• Network Policies Overview - Layer 3 hooks for firewall, routing and QoS.
• Developer Getting Started - hands-on developer getting started guide.